You’d think by now I would have lost my ability to be surprised. Floods in Death Valley, fires in Hawaii (where it rains 30 inches a year), a former US president charged with 91 felonies and India landing on the moon.
Still, I was a bit startled to see a fresh, purple bouquet of “surprise lilies” standing in the middle of my brown, dried-up lawn. I know that’s their special trick. They do it every year. But I thought even they, flowers whose very name gives away their secret, could not manage the old gag without occasional rainfall. I mean, what can grow out of hard, sunbaked dirt? These joke flowers sprout foliage in the spring, then fake their own death—only to suddenly appear like a magician’s trick in late summer. They are also known as “resurrection lilies”. Which brings us to the sad part.
Not far from where my new lilies bloomed was a large ash tree that had died over the summer. I knew I had better take it down before it fell on the house or on some unsuspecting squirrel. In a whimsical impulse of compassion, I determined to spare the lives of the surprise lilies. I have experience felling trees and I know the techniques for dropping one where I want it. So, I notched the trunk, applied tension with one end of the rope to an upper limb and the other to my truck’s trailer hitch. Then, with a final cut, the mighty ash cracked and fell. Right on my lilies. Surprise!
Another surprise I found in the yard this year for the first time were “pokeweeds”. Like resurrection lilies, these weeds seem to sprout up almost overnight. I was doing my weekly trimming around the fence when I noticed these four-feet tall weeds with stalks like cattails with a bad case of chickenpox. Concerned, I looked them up to discover that these huge, creepy-looking plants, also known as dragonberries, inkberries or poke sallet, are deadly poisonous to humans and pets. Touching the leaves can result in a rash like poison ivy. Ingesting the large taproot could cause convulsions, respiratory distress, vomiting and other unpleasantness. The purple berries are also poisonous, but it seems our catbird quite likes them. So do cardinals and mockingbirds.
A dead tree doesn’t always fall predictably but I was sorry my miscalculation resulted in the brave resurrection lilies getting flattened. Grimly, over the next couple of days, I sawed up the wood and raked up the twigs. Standing back to admire the fruits of my labors, I was amazed—even surprised to find my lilies had arisen, tall and proud in full bloom, laughing at me, as if a ten-ton ash tree had not just landed on them.
Maybe resurrection lilies are trying to tell us something. Don’t believe everything you see. Don’t give up hope no matter what. You probably don’t have enough information to take yourself seriously. (Still, no amount of optimism can save you from the pokeweeds.)